Motivated by the regulatory debate in electricity markets, we seek to understand how market design affects market performance through its impact on investment incentives. For this purpose, we study a two-stage game in which firms choose their capacities under demand uncertainty prior to bidding...

We study whether the 2002 deregulation and vertical unbundling of the Chinese electricity sector has boosted productivity in the generation segment of the industry. Controlling explicitly for sources of price-heterogeneity across firms and for firm-fixed effects, we find deregulation to be...

This paper reviews the theories of corruption in regulated sectors to further understand the impact of corruption and the ways in which it can be reduced. The aim is to draw out the policy implications of the different theoretical approaches and to examine the support that can be garnered for...

This paper compares the welfare effects of three ways in which health care can be organized: no competition (NC), competition for the market (CfM) and competition on the market (CoM) where the payer offers the optimal contract to providers in each case. We argue that each of these can be optimal...

We study the repeal of a regulation that imposed maximum wholesale and retail markups for all but five fresh fruits and vegetables. We compare the prices of products affected by regulation before and after the policy change and use the unregulated products as a control group. We find that...

We investigate cooperative investment for the deployment of a new infrastructure, and how it interacts with access obligations and demand uncertainty. Co-investment increases total coverage only if service differentiation and/or cost savings from joint investment, in particular due to high...

This paper seeks to bridge the gap between economists focused on designing competitive market mechanisms and engineers focused on the physical attributes and engineering requirements they perceive as being needed for operating a reliable electric power system. The paper starts by deriving the...

The paper analyses the problem of optimal taxation in oligopoly when environmental degradation induced by the industry production process feeds back into market demand. The main assumption is that economic agents and the policy-maker care about the environment only because its degradation...

The purpose of this paper is to suggest how institutions can be created and modified to devise and implement industrial policy in the emerging market economies. Two main issues confronting industrial policy institutions are how to avoid regulatory capture, that is, having those policy-makers...

In this paper, we examine how cross-market price restrictions impact strategic entry and pricing decisions. A motivating example is the 1996 Act in the United States which opens telecommunications markets to competition and contains a provision for universal service, requiring that advanced...